Republicans lash out -- at each other

A Republican presidential debate became a race to the bottom Monday night as candidates attacked each other for treason, lack of manliness, trying to prevent cervical cancer, and even - - gasp - - letting campaign contributions affect their judgment.

When Michele Bachmann, trying to claw her way back up in the polls, bashed Texas Gov. Rick Perry for taking money from a drug company in return for a favorable executive order, Perry was dismissive.

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The drug company had given him only $5,000 out of the $30 million he had raised, Perry said. “If you’re suggesting I can be bought for 5,000, I’m offended,” he scoffed.

Right. It would take much more than that.

At the last Republican debate only five days ago, Perry complained that he felt like he had become a “piñata.” Monday night, at the CNN/Tea Party Express debate in Tampa, Perry must have felt like he was inside a kettle drum with the other candidates jumping up and down on it.

Even moderate, measured, calm and collected Jon Huntsman, who is so far back in the polls he might as well be running in an alternate universe, decided that climbing on Perry was his staircase to heaven.

Perry, like two other border-state governors before him, George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan, is a relative moderate on immigration and Perry said during the debate that building a fence along the entire border with Mexico is impractical.

Huntsman pounced. “For Rick to say we can’t secure the border is pretty much a treasonous statement,” he said.

Huntsman probably meant this as a backhanded joke. Earlier in the year Perry had said that if the Federal Reserve Board printed more money, it would be “almost treacherous, or treasonous in my opinion.”

But Huntsman laid an egg with the audience, which sat in stunned silence. It was a Perry crowd, anyway. If the polls are to be believed, much of the Republican Party is a Perry crowd.

A CNN/Opinion Research Poll completed on Sunday, showed Perry at 30 percent, Mitt Romney at 18 percent, Sarah Palin (who currently is not running) at 15 percent and Ron Paul at 12 percent. The rest of the pack (can you name them? sure you can) including U.S. Rep. Bachmann, is in low single digits.

But while Romney believes he ultimately will win the nomination by persuading primary voters he is more electable than Perry, he can’t afford to let Perry get too far ahead of him. So Monday night, Romney directly attacked Perry on his greatest claim to fame, that Perry dramatically has improved the economy of Texas.